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Thursday, August 2, 2012

Wonderland Session 3

This session showed that even with planning, games can go sideways without too much influence. Two of my players were unable to attend, so the events I had planned for the session had to be scrapped and new ones had to be implemented quickly.

My players were on an island that had time zones- large geographic regions that were permanently twilight, early morning, afternoon, etc. They had found the remnants of what might have once been a village and decided to camp there for the "night" (even though it was mid afternoon).

The group woke up, and two members of their group were missing. As they started to look around, The Captain noticed that some of his clothes were lightly wet. It wasn't really "wet", but somewhat more tacky, like antibacterial hand gel. Further investigation showed that there were spots of the tacky like liquid along the tops of the stonework ruins, but not anywhere on the ground.

Several members of the group looked up - to check for rain, to spot possible things about to swoop from above (they are generally paranoid), etc. They see nothing unusual, so they gather their things and leave their encampment to head towards a large lake they know of through Alistair the newbie.

As they encounter the somewhat kidney shaped lake, they find a large metal structure standing at the edge of the lake. It resembles something like this:

The group completely ignores the structure almost entirely except to discover that the tubes made hollow sounds and were made of metal. ( I had hoped they would experiment with it to discover a sonic sequence to open a doorway to the next area they would explore.)

Squeakers the clown decides to explore while the group is doing other things. He makes his way around the perimeter of the lake and spots an anomaly of some sort. It almost blends in at first look, but it appears to be a bubble on the surface of the lake.

Squeakers gets the attention of the rest of the group and they all investigate the bubble. The Explorer (Sir Epperson the III) walks forward, and the bubble has a tension that is constant, and acts more like a gelatinous barrier than a liquid.

After testing the barrier a little more, Sir Epperson walks forward and "into" the bubble. The bubble closes over him and he discovers a tube-line tunnel that goes down. He jumps in, and discovers it leads deep underwater. Sir Epperson doesn't have any swimming or breathing underwater abilities, so he quickly makes his way back up to the surface and lets the group know what he's found.

Member by member of the group attempt to enter the barrier, and it resists a majority of them with pretty seriously. None of the group quite figure out what makes the barrier try to keep someone out, but Alistair makes it through and goes down the tube. He makes his way underwater to what appears to be a city. (He doesn't need to breathe because he has special abilities he hasn't told the group about yet.) He explores the city at least a little, finding it almost entirely deserted despite obvious signs of habitation.

Another member of the group makes it down the tube, and the exploration of the underwater city begins in earnest.

Squeakers engineers a way for Sir Epperson to be underwater without drowning (but up above the action), so the group is entirely underwater for this adventure.

A baby is found hiding in a cupboard, alone in the city. Squeakers manages to charm the baby right into his arms (while on a unicycle underwater!) and through a telepathic toy, discovers that the baby is trying to find her family.

Alistair has found the baby's family, but the encounter isn't friendly. He has opened a door of a large building in the center of the city, and encounters a large Zoidburg like entity holding a trident. The trident pokes Alistair and he gets a message loud and clear to go away.

Shortly after, Squeakers arrives with the baby at the building. When he knocks on the door, the building unfolds and a massive figure that was effectively acting as camouflage over the building unfolds and begins a strange watery conversation with Squeakers.

The conversation conveys the idea that Squeakers found the baby and is returning her to be protected by her family or her guardians. The group discovers that the sorceress and policeman have been taken to "the dark place" . The guardian's name is Jershaw, and he explains (in his bizarre way) that the baby has a role in finding the Gods, but not right now.

Jershaw offers to take the group to the dark place, and provides air to the group for their comfort. Sir Epperson is relieved to find real air instead of his makeshift breathing hole. The conversation continues, with the group's desire to find the Gods revealed, and the baby's prominence at a later date being mentioned again.

The group finds the sorceress and the policeman asleep under an altar to the Twin Gods. They ask Jershaw to help them get their VoidShip, and strap everyone onto it and ship off into the ether yet again.

After they enter the void, the void tries to confuse them, but they manage to push through the tidal pool and head off for another "island". Instead of spooky, eerie or otherwise strange sights on the way to the "beachhead", there is brilliant light and a musical chorus.

They land on a lush prairie in the middle of the day. They start exploring, and find a large Japanese garden that appears to surround a large building. They find out that the building is a temple, and there are a lot of monks inside. The monks are extremely pleasant and happy, and this makes the group paranoid beyond belief.

They have tea and then talk to an older monk, who is excited about their plans to try to find the Twin Gods, and they explore the area some more. We then cut for the night.